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The Waves
The Waves - Spine 2012
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Discussion - Week Two - The Waves - Section 3 & 4
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OK - so without looking at any of the posts in this thread, how do I see this ... Sections 3 & 4?The six meet and throughout the course of their time together they realize - one cannot be who he/she is, without the others.
We need other people in our lives in order to shine.
Erika wrote: "This line from section 3 particularly struck me: "...which of these people am I? It depends so much upon the room. When I say to myself, 'Bernard,' who comes?"I wonder what you all make of Bernard."
Me? Bernard is obsessed with himself. He is trying to be everybody he meets.
It's like when I was teen - couldn't decide who I wanted to marry - Elvis? Sal Mineo? Tommy Sands? Well, I couldn't have them all ... I struggled with this, and to my teen-self? It was indeed important.
Bernard's every move seems to be taken according to how others will perceive him - his whole life is a stage and he enjoys the performance. He probably wants to go to his own funeral.
And yes ... I'm starting to like the book. And the style in which it is written.On reading the other posts, I see that I'm not grasping the things others are grasping ... but I'm not going to worry about that right now. Don't want to be Bernard, do I? Heh! Heh!
Whitney wrote: "Rachel wrote: "It speaks to the question that has come up already of whether these are six individual characters or six facets of the same entity..."I think it’s fair to say that the (or at least..."
I think it’s fair to say that the (or at least a) dominant theme of the book is how individual identity is affected by others, or to what extent it exists apart from others.
***** Eggzactly ... that's how I'm seeing it. In the beginning a wave is just one wave that's growing. Eventually it breaks up into six different waves, but still they stick together and although individuals, their development is as a group.
Just like birds on the wire. Each selects and pounces on his own worm, but in the end, it's all the same bird - and all the same worm.
Then as the waves grow, fan out on the beach, each develops a life of its own - but still, depend on each other.
So maybe in the beginning we are merely duplicates of one another. Mirror images - just like watching a buncha' tweens standing outside the school. I often see that - I'll see a group of young girls boogeying down the street and I'll say to Jeff, there goes a half dozen versions of our Rachel.
In section 4, the waves are more aware of each other individually - they are no longer confident of themselves as being successful waves. They compare themselves to the others.
Bernard, I can see this coming - he's going to have a hard time becoming his own man.
I think it's important that every child is taught to develop a good sense of self/self-worth.
Then again, this can go too far - a person can stunt his own growth by trying to be different.
Who is the guy that clerks in an office - Louis? Yeah ... there's that part where he's sitting in a restaurant, conscious of how the other clerks purport themselves.Does he dare be any different? Does he want to be different - is there a true Louis who wants to be himself, but cannot because his job depends on his sticking to the 'norm'?
Mod
Does he dare be any different? Does he want to be different - is there a true Louis who wants to be himself, but cannot because his job depends on his sticking to the 'norm'?..."
He 'knows' he is different. He reads great literature in the midst of the restaurant's lunchtime din. He is a bit bitter because he believes he is every bit as much of a scholar as Neville and Bernard, but cannot follow them to the university because his family cannot afford to send him.
I think I have a little more sympathy for Bernard than others do. I've been trying to figure out why. Part of it may be that I had a very close friend in high school, college and all through my twenties whom Bernard strongly evokes for me. But, I also think that many of us try on different hats, connect to stories (made up or true), and almost desperately need our friends in the early stages of our lives. It seems to me that for many people those years can be the height of self absorption. Bernard does seem to care about his friends and in his way, through his stories, tries to understand them (and helps us to understand them).
Mod
Bernard's caring goes further than just his friends. At times, he seems almost like a young, touchy-feely Leo Buscaglia type, wanting to heal the world.
From the end of Part 2, on the train:
'Louis and Neville,' said Bernard, 'both sit silent. Both are absorbed. Both feel the presence of other people as a separating wall. But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings - see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off off my lips. It seems that a match is set to fire; something burns. .... I do not believe in separation. We are not single.
Bernard wants to hug the world and does so through his endless stories, hoping he will pull people together, and I imagine also hopes the world will hug him back. Where it becomes a sad story is when he later bemoans the fact that alone in his room, he loses his stories, and in effect loses himself. When he calls out "Bernard", who answers the call?
Louis has so deeply internalized his difference (his accent, his foreignness, his economic status) to the point that he has willfully separated himself from his community (from the very beginning when he didn't go in to breakfast but hid in the bushes)--almost the opposite of Bernard, who is nothing without his community. (Although, it is interesting that Louis also finds himself in others, but it is in the collection of great figures from the past, the reincarnated multitudes, that he feels exist in him.)
Jim wrote: "Erika wrote: "I think I have a little more sympathy for Bernard than others do. I've been trying to figure out why. Part of it may be that I had a very close friend in high school, college and all ..."Jim, good point, I agree. I feel very sad for Bernard alone in his room.
The image of the smoke rings in your quote reminds me of another connection between the Interlude an the Soliloquies in part Three. In the penultimate paragraph of the Interlude Woolf writes, "Now, too, the rising sun came in at the window touching the red-edged curtain and began to bring out circles and lines." In reading the Soliloquies, I take the circle and line to be circles and lines of connection.
After Neville gives Bernard his poem and Bernard speaks of their friendship (and that Neville has the power to drag him open, "laying bare the pebbles on the shore of my soul."), he says, " How strange to feel the line that is spun from us lengthening its fine filament across the misty spaces of the intervening world."
Later, Jinny speaks of music and the dance and it's power of connection, saying, "In and out, we are swept now into this large figure; it holds us together; we cannot step outside its sinuous, its hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls"
Erika wrote: "Later, Jinny speaks of music and the dance and it's power of connection..."I see so many similarities between Jinny and Bernard. They both want so much to embrace the world by giving the best of themselves to it. With Jinny it's her dancing, her gaiety; with Bernard it's his stories. But with both it's a superficial love. They can't truly embrace themselves, so they can't truly embrace anyone else.
Mod
http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_baggi..."
True! This especially mirrors some of Bernard's ideas from his Section 9 soliloquy.
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
Orientalism (other topics)Mrs. Dalloway (other topics)
Orlando (other topics)
To the Lighthouse (other topics)
For me, this part of the chapter is filled with uncertainty, self-doubt, anger, vulnerability, challenge, moments of understanding and connection, others of alienation.
Bernard questions his identity: "What am I? I ask. This? No I am that....Which of these people am I? It depends so much upon the room. When I say to myself, 'Bernard," who comes?"
Neville says, "I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet." But soon after he doubts, "Yet it is incredible that I should not be a great poet. What did I write last night if not poetry? Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am." (I love that last sentence.)
And later Neville's painful questions, directed at Bernard but also inevitably a question he has repeated to himself, "I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?...But am I doomed to cause disgust? Am I a poet?"
Other things that struck me:
When Bernard says to Neville, "Let me create you." Pompous, no? But what he goes on to say seems to me to be very honest and, from what we know, accurate.
Also Bernard's, "Yet love is simple."
And the final part of Bernard's soliloquy with the great image of his cigarette spiraling lightly to the ground and his thought of Louis, "I feel Louis watching even my cigarette. And Louis says, That means something. But what?"